Gov’t tightens summary killing probes

THE AQUINO administration has come up with a plan to prioritize the investigation of summary executions or so-called extrajudicial killings of political activists, including journalists, and to more effectively prosecute these cases.

The Department of Justice (DOJ) said yesterday it had finalized with the Department of the Interior and Local Government (DILG) joint operational guidelines on how to go about the speedy investigation and prosecution of cases.

The high incidence of extrajudicial killings in the Philippines has become an international issue. Human rights organizations have documented hundreds of suspected extrajudicial killings of political activists, human rights campaigners, lawyers and journalists in the past decade.

In the past two years of the Aquino administration, the human rights group Karapatan documented 129 victims of possible extrajudicial killings, 14 of them of media people.

The new DOJ-DILG regulations call on law enforcers and prosecutors to team up during “all phases of the criminal proceedings” to ensure that the killings “are effectively investigated and successfully prosecuted.”

48-hour assessment

The new regulations are in line with an administrative order issued in 2007 ordering the two departments to come up with implementing rules and regulations for the successful investigation and prosecution of these killings.

A main feature of the guidelines is its requirement that within 48 hours, law enforcement agencies will be required to make an assessment of “whether or not the incident may be treated as a possible political activist or media killing.”

If it is determined that the killing can be treated as such, the law enforcement unit needs to report to the appropriate chief of police or provincial director, who will then inform the prosecutor’s office concerned to get involved in the investigation.

Task Force 211

The prosecutors and law enforcers will then be required to file a final investigation report and file the proper complaint in the city or provincial prosecutor’s office. The prosecutor general has two days from receiving the investigation report to inform Task Force 211, a body that was created during the past administration to investigate these types of killings.

Under the guidelines as well, the preliminary investigation of a case should be completed within 30 days from receipt of the complaint.

“No reply/rejoinder shall be entertained and no motions for extension of time shall be al- lowed,” the guidelines say.

In the event probable cause is determined after a preliminary investigation, the prosecutor general has two days upon receipt of the resolution to act on the recommendation and order the filing of a case in court.

The guidelines require the prosecutor, assisting prosecutor and law enforcement investigators to continue to coordinate with each other during the trial of the case.

In a report to the United Nations in 2008, Philip Alston, the Special Rapporteur on extrajudicial, summary or arbitrary executions, noted that the many extrajudicial executions in the Philippines “have eliminated civil society leaders, including human rights defenders, trade unionists and land reform advo- cates, intimidated a vast number of civil society actors, and narrowed the country’s political discourse.”

“Depending on who is counting and how, the total number of such executions ranges from 100 to over 800,” Alston’s report said.

The military has denied any involvement in extrajudicial killings.